Page 59 of Wench

She kisses him like it’s instinct, her hands fisting in the damp linen of his shirt as she shifts against him. His body arches into hers, and she can feel exactly what she’s doing to him.

The kiss grows frantic, his mouth moving along her jaw and down her neck. His hands slide down, one gripping her thigh, the other gripping the back of her tunic and tugging it upward until his fingers find bare skin at her waist. His palm is calloused and hot and utterly unrelenting. When he drags it up her spine, she releases a soft, desperate sound she doesn’t recognize.

Clothes are an obstacle. Her tunic is already halfway off her shoulder when he drags the neckline further down with his teeth, baring her collarbone to the light. His mouth finds the curve of it in the next breath, lips greedy, his tongue flicking against the salt on her skin. She whimpers, digging her fingers into his hair, pulling him closer, and he groans like she’s breaking him.

Their legs tangle. Her knees tighten against his waist, and his hands are everywhere now – breasts, ribs, thighs – clawing at her like a drowning man might reach for shore. When his palm skims beneath the hem of her skirt and travels along the inside of her thigh, Marian nearly comes undone.

‘Say it again,’ she pants, dragging her mouth along the line of his jaw, the scrape of stubble raw and delicious.

‘You win, Marian,’ he moans, his voice low and rough against her neck. ‘Now, let me show you your prize.’

Lox’s hand curls around the base of her neck, tugging just enough to make her gasp, as he flips her beneath him. Their bodies roll in a blur of heat and breathless laughter. Now it’s his weight above her, braced on forearms, lips parted, eyes dark with need.

The world narrows to the heat between their bodies, the rasp of linen, the damp scent of moss and sweat and desire. Her fingers twist into the fabric at his collar, his shirt pulled half off his shoulders, baring bronzed skin inked with faint vines that seem to pulse with life. Her nails dig into his shoulders like he’s the last stable thing in a world built to break her.

She rolls her body against him and he groans into her mouth, sending a bolt of want straight through her core.

Marian kisses him like she needs to forget, and Lox kisses her like he’s desperate to remember.

‘Tell me to stop,’ he groans against her, as his fingers drag down the soft swell of her stomach, teasing at the waistband of her skirt.

The smile that stretches across Marian’s mouth would make a nun blush.

‘That’s not in my nature,’ she whispers.

Lox kisses her with the kind of hunger that unspools every careful knot she’s tied around herself. His teeth nip at her lower lip before his tongue coaxes her mouth open with a force that leaves no room for doubt. Her body answers, hips tilting up to meet the cradle of his, and the friction between them sparks white-hot.

It feels like her skin is too small to hold what’s surging through her.

‘Marian.’ He whispers her name like a prayer spat from a sinner’s mouth. His eyes burn, wild and soft all at once, pupils blown wide, as if he’s drunk on her.

The sunlight spins gold across his face, catching in the ends of his hair and casting a halo over the dangerous line of his jaw.

‘You drive me mad,’ he says, nipping at her ear.

‘Then stop pretending you’re sane,’ she moans. Her legs wrap around his waist and pull him closer.

He grunts, hips grinding down, and her head falls back with a cry, pleasure cresting so sharp that it steals her voice. His hand curls behind her knee, tilting her hips up, and the sudden press of him, with too little between them, makes her roar again, need ripping through her like a tide she can’t wait to drown in.

But before Marian can lose herself entirely to the way his body bears down on hers, a voice cuts through the clearing like an arrow loosed too close.

‘You fucking traitor.’

ChapterEighteen

Marian freezes.

Lox’s breath stills against her, hands halting where they’ve just begun to explore the dip between her legs.

They both turn toward the sound, panting and tangled and flushed, the grass flattened beneath them as proof of something that can’t be taken back.

Will stands at the edge of the clearing, daggers in hand, rage burning in their eyes, jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth.

Lox rolls off Marian in a blur that’s far too composed for what just nearly happened. He rises, chest half-bared. The laces of his tunic are still undone, but he doesn’t bother fixing it.

Marian scrambles upright, pulse thundering, blood singing with heat that now feels criminal under her skin. She tugs her clothes back into place as if that will cover where Lox’s mouth had worshipped.

‘What are you doing here, Willow?’ Lox grinds out.